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Some of the watermelon
(lemmy.nz)
Got near a hundred mini watermelon this year, the very late ones were no good but for a couple months they were glorious. Mini love variety, it was a brutally hot summer and they flourished, I let them take over the whole garden.
Two plants survived being overrun by watermelon, the asparagus and the hong tsoi. I'm sort of resting it until "spring" which is planted around Feb here.
It's always fun to see post like this.
I hope you like the name of the variety "Mini Love", I named it and made the decision to launch it from the breeding program to commercialization.
A few fun things about the variety.
The variety was created in Thailand by a naughty young plant breeder who ignored managements directions and had a bit of fun. Management was quite annoyed with me when I launched it as the breeders very first commercial variety. Genetically it's a tropically adapted hybrid variety with excellent tolerance to fungi.
It has several dwarf genes that decreases the plant size by around 50% versus traditional watermelons. Most other personal sized watermelons are on massive vines that look like a hedge at the end of the season.
The first customer was a large greenhouse that sold plants into the UK. They liked the variety because it grafted very well onto Cucubita maxima x C. moschata rootstock. It also set fruit and matured very early and was one of the few watermelons that could survive in the UK.
The name was almost rejected in the E.U. because using descriptors of the variety is prohibited in the naming. A quick thinking young lady in admin managed to convince them the "mini" didn't refer to its size (it totally did), but to small love (emotion). Pretty shitty argument in my opinion but they fell for it.
Wow! Mr. or Ms. Mini Love themsef!
Yes on resistance to fungus - I spray it once, mid-season, with dilute elemental copper and that's all. And yep, almost a hundred fruit in 400 sq feet of garden, I've grown it before but this year just let it take over, it was too dry for okra, which is the usual winner in summer here.
What's ironic is the variety was bred for the high intensity production in Thailand. They seed one plant per 1 sq ft. They only harvest 1 fruit per plant.
I only planted about 6 seeds and got nearly 100 melons, this was an exceptional year for them. Probably 25% loss because it flooded eventually and of course a few tried climbing and they are too heavy for that. Usually I get maybe 25-30 over the whole season.
They are so sweet that even after it started raining daily they were still great. Such a sturdy variety.
One plant per sq foot I can't imagine. Compact for a watermelon but they still sprawl, and pollination gets better and better through the season, bees were still trying at the end.
Do they do well in hydroponics?
No watermelon does really well in hydroponics. They can tolerate it but they don't really like it.